Review: It's 'World War Zzzzz'

"World War Z" may well be the most lethal zombie picture ever because it's almost dreadful enough to kill off the whole undead oeuvre.

To be fair, Marc Forster's mindless action-adventure has its high points, namely staggering special-effects. From a towering mass of zombies besieging a wall in Jerusalem to a swarm of biters scaling a high-rise, the visual set pieces are epic and inventive, if all too fleeting.

Although it is based on Max Brooks' 2006 novel, there is little hint of psychology and emotion amid the carnage. There is also a puzzling back of blood and guts, which is bad news for the legions of gore hounds who have been eagerly awaiting a creepy thrill ride worth its reported $200 million budget.

The trouble is that if you don't have fascinating characters or squirm-inducing disembowelment, the zombie tropes (aim for the head, don't make noise, etc.) get old fast even with the 3-D gambit. In this case, the "Z" in the title may also stand for "zzzzzzz," the sound many in the audience will be making by the final frame.

Advertisement

As has been widely noted, this long-awaited blockbuster was rewritten and reshot by committee, which may have contributed to its formulaic sensibility. Even for those of us who will always adore Brad Pitt, it's hard to keep rooting for a big bloated hulk of a movie that lumbers like a reanimated corpse, lurching forward without any real idea of where it wants to go.

Pitt, sporting one of the few haircuts he can't quite pull off, stars as Gerry Lane, a U.N. investigator who must travel around the globe searching for clues to solve a pandemic some are calling the "zombie flu." It's the predictable globe-trotting race against time to find patient zero scenario and, sadly, it's been done better before.

The brain-munchers are lightning-fast and rabid instead of the old-school shambling corpse patrols of George Romero but even that has been seen before ("28 Days Later"). Indeed, it's ironic but one of the reasons "Z" is so intensely disappointing is that the bar has been raised extremely high on flesh-eating fiends in recent years. Clunky dialogue, cookie cutter family-in-peril scenes and a few good scares just don't just stand up in the realm now peopled by the depth and nuance of "The Walking Dead."

When Gerry dithers over whether to leave his lovely wife (Mireille Enos) and sweet little girls (Abigail Hargrove, Sterling Jerins) on an aircraft carrier (which is one of the few safe places left!) in order to save the planet, it just seems like showboating. What kind of hero dithers at the end of the world?

Forster ("Quantum of Solace") seems to have forgotten that you have to care about characters in order to give a hoot when they get eviscerated. Repeatedly. For almost two hours. All over the world.

Other than the CGI eye candy, which is intense, there is little in the way of layers and complexity to this portrait of pandemonium.

If you were judging by this picture alone, you would never suspect that a zombie apocalypse can also be witty (see "Zombieland") or nightmare-inducing (see "Quarantine") or politically-charged (see any of the Romero movies). Indeed, one of the reasons the zombie has such legs in pop culture is that it lends itself to cautionary tales that feed off our fear of contagion. While "Z" hints that the plague might have stemmed from environmental collapse, the movie never mines that subtext effectively.

There's also a strange squeamishness to the film which avoids grisliness at all cost. Hands are lopped off and bellies impaled with almost no blood. That wouldn't matter if the film were more taut and tense but there are precious few chills. A few of the confrontations with the ghouls are downright silly (the teeth-clacking zombie in the lab evoked giggles at Tuesday's screening). One of the thriller's few suspenseful scenes involves an outbreak on an airplane in midair that reminds you of the menace so much of movie lacks.

Even the eye-popping special effects, where zombies mimic the voracious hives found in nature, aren't enough to breathe life into "World War Z."